Fighting the dark

[Invisible officer]

It's now some years since I did my last Space Marines. I realy enjoyed the Rhino conversions and the " do what you like" on the Marines. No historical sources, any rules? No.

[Parus Ater]

Pretty good but do they not have sand and static grass where you live?

[grant]

Rogue Trader for the win!

[Invisible officer]

Pretty good but do they not have sand and static grass where you live?

In the " Märkische Streusandbüchse" we have a lot of sand. But only natural grass.

You must remember my age. Half of my wargaming "career" was in the dark ages. Realy no modern static grass, only those lumps of green plastic rasp or mats of paper with grass that looked very artificial. Plants that looked like alien mutations.

These Space marines got the perfect basing for v44rx3, you know that lump of slate in that system they battle in.

(My 4 cm AWI get grass , different size....)

[Parus Ater]

Lol!

I was talking about this the other day, you could get GW static grass back in the day and folk were using painted sand with it like we do now but only on terrain pieces and tables. Model basing was ALWAYS done with green cork flock with a yellow drybrush. Ich!
I remember giving what would be modern basing a go and folk not liking it, consensus was it detracted from models.
I'm a film believer that a brilliantly painted model on a poor base looks okay but a medium quality painted model on a good base looks excellent. For the ten minutes of actual work to do a unit the extra visual quality is well worth it.
I got told my new dwarf basing was silly the other day... Must be doing something right!

[janner]

Lol!

I was talking about this the other day, you could get GW static grass back in the day and folk were using painted sand with it like we do now but only on terrain pieces and tables. Model basing was ALWAYS done with green cork flock with a yellow drybrush. Ich!
I remember giving what would be modern basing a go and folk not liking it, consensus was it detracted from models.
I'm a film believer that a brilliantly painted model on a poor base looks okay but a medium quality painted model on a good base looks excellent. For the ten minutes of actual work to do a unit the extra visual quality is well worth it.
I got told my new dwarf basing was silly the other day... Must be doing something right!

Depends when you mean by back in the day.

I used to get my static grass from Faller pre-GW

I agree on basing though. For ancients and early medievals you can cover a multitude of sins with LBM shield transfers and stardards, and good basing

[Parus Ater]

"Back in the day" was the mid nineties I remember seeing GW static grass but the luminous green cork flock was the sartorial requirement well into the beginning of the noughties and you were still seeing it a good few years after that. I remember doing it for the 3rd Ed 40K boxed game so likely the run up to chrismas 1998 and I ad done it before that.
I'll be honest, I wasn't at the forefront of modelling science. I had an orc army which I used sand on the bases since I live on the coast and went for a drybrush stoney look. I then made my "home side" table to match and had went to Wonderland Models to get trees and came out with loads of grass as well. It then made sense to use it on the bases.
I'll add I hadn't seen an army with grass before, just single display models so the idea wasn't fantastically new but I've spoke to people about it and it was around that time did sandy grassy bases start popping up.

[Invisible officer]

Oh yes, cork. Good old natural times.

I painted these Marines 15 + years ago. May be 20+ . The Fantasy / SF shop where I bought them is long gone and it sold no plants or grass at all. Not even good colours. In Berlin everything was a little slow. Wargaming shops? No. Only Fantasy and classic Zinnfiguren. Flat ones or large expensive 3D kits. 54mm, 80mm 120mm.

Even the big Scholtz Zinnfiguren sold nothing like that. Colours, yes, but only artist oil colours. Grass? "Go to the railroad modelling shops." They sold flat Zinnfiguren metal trees and told you to paint the bases green.

I spent many hours at the customs to get the wargaming stuff. And walked barefeet 20 miles in the snow to school. No, , but it was mail order for nearly everything and the custom boys had been...... . Hauptzollamt Süd is still infamous.

Today the situation changed enormously . We have shops for Wargaming and even Scholtz sells Warlord. And tufts.

But old dogs and new tricks. One big advantage of my "mud" bases is that they are very durable. Those done 30 years ago are in the same condition as those done last week. And no problems with dust.! Tufts catch a lot of that. And I'm not sure that they are realy durable. UV and aging may ... . Not in 10 or 15 years. But I plan for some more.

[Parus Ater]

That is the benefit these days, if you're local shop doesn't have it then you can have it sooner by mail order than if you tried to make it to another stockist. The downside is that it's made it easier for me to be a model tart and not stick to the one thing.